examination of social violence and family tragedy.
This was the first full-length work that Green, who
had written several one-act plays, completed. It
became part of the growing and increasingly influ-
ential canon of works on African-American
themes by white writers. It also contributed to na-
tional awareness of LYNCHINGas it showcased the
simmering volatility and perpetual danger that
African Americans faced in the American South.
The play’s title recalls the biblical phrase that
referred to one’s ability to enjoy happiness and
tranquillity. The plot, however, runs counter to the
biblical meaning. The play is set in the South dur-
ing Reconstruction and the early 20th century. It
documents the life of Abraham McCranie, his
white father, a former slave owner named Colonel
McCranie, and the legitimate white heir, Lonnie.
Abe, who works as a field hand on his father’s
plantation, is an ambitious young man determined
to survive the brutal South. Other African-Ameri-
can men on the McCranie estate believe that the
mixed-blood protagonist is not safe. They attribute
his talkativeness, desire for education, and aspira-
tions to being “bad mixed up all down inside.”
Green imagines Abe as a 25-year-old man whose
“shaggy head, forehead, and jaw are marked with
will and intelligence.” He signals the impending
racial conflict, however, by noting that the charac-
ter’s “wide nostril and a smoldering flash in his eye
that now and then shows itself suggest a passionate
and dangerous person when aroused.” In sharp
contrast to the potentially heroic Abe is his disso-
lute father, a “stout, run-down southerner, past
middle age, with all the signs of moral and intellec-
tual decadence upon him.” The flawed and dys-
functional McCranie patriarch is soon threatened
by a testy encounter between Abe and his white
half brother Lonnie. The Colonel is forced to whip
his son Abe when the struggle between the broth-
ers comes to blows.
The domestic oppression of Abe McCranie
and his family continues as the play progresses.
Married to Goldie, a mulatto woman, the two have
lost three children in infancy. Lonnie McCranie
has desecrated the children’s burial plots, and such
malicious actions have thoroughly demoralized
Abe and his wife. Just days after the couple have
their fourth child, the colonel surprises the couple
with a deed that makes them owners of their home
and 25 acres of land. Jubilant, Abe’s faith in hu-
manity and his own future is rekindled. He names
his new son Douglass, after the formerly enslaved
abolitionist leader. Abe regards his son as a “new
Moses,” one who will “bring the chillun out of
bondage, ou’n sin and ignorance.” Empowered by
his domestic stability, Abe starts a school for the
African-American children of the area. His rigidity
and strong discipline anger the parents, however,
and the school fails as the children withdraw in
protest. He is alienated from his only son when he
reacts violently to what he regards as idleness and
dissolute behavior. Years later Abe is working as a
miner. He still holds on to his dream of intellectual
advancement even as the women of his household
continually dream of burning his scholarly books.
The tension in the play builds as Abe becomes de-
termined to rally African Americans and to defy
white power. He is engaged in a final and murder-
ous altercation with Lonnie, and it is his own son
who betrays him to the mob that wants to kill him.
The play closes as Goldie discovers her husband
dead in the front room of their home.
Green’s play is a powerful story of a family ru-
ined by years of oppression and hardship. It was a
Broadway hit when it opened at the Provincetown
Playhouse on BROADWAYon 30 December 1926.
The troupe presented some 200 performances.
Jasper Deeter directed the production presented by
the PROVINCETOWN PLAYERS. This group,
founded in Provincetown, Massachusetts, by
Hutchins Hapgood, his wife EMILIE HAPGOOD,
Neith Boyce, MABELDODGE, and others, prided
itself on staging works that engaged contemporary
social questions and issues. In Abraham’s Bosom
won the 1927 Pulitzer Prize in drama.Bibliography
Adams, Agatha B. Paul Green of Chapel Hill.Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Library, 1951.
Avery, Lawrence G., ed. A Southern Life: Letters of Paul
Green, 1916–1918. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1994.
Gassner, John. Paul Green: Five Plays of the South.New
York: Hill and Wang, 1963.
Green, Paul. The Field God and In Abraham’s Bosom.
New York: R. M. McBride & Company, 1927.
Huggins, Nathan. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1971.268 In Abraham’s Bosom